Climate change: a global health emergency

Medical students have an important part to play, recent reports show

By:
Aditi Das

Climate change is the greatest global health threat of the 21st century. This is the profound underlying message of two recently released reports. Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change was published by the Lancet and University College London (UCL).1 It was produced by a group of doctors, students, engineers, lawyers, economists, philosophers and others, united in a common goal—to quantify the health effects of global warming. It warns that if we fail to mitigate climate change in the next few years, deaths from infectious diseases, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease among others will be in the billions. The second report, The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis, is from the Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF) and provides concrete evidence that climate change is a health emergency.2

The Lancet-UCL report highlights that rising temperatures worldwide not only encourage the spread of infectious diseases such as malaria but will also increase incidence of